TAMPA -- The man in the gray Tampa Sickles sweat shirt approached Jordan Smith on Tuesday night.
He politely interrupted a conversation, put a hand on Smith’s back and leaned in close to Palmetto’s senior shooting guard.
“Opponent or not, son,” the man said, “that was a great game. You can shoot the (darn) ball.”
Regardless of what side of the gym you were sitting when Palmetto knocked off Tampa Sickles 63-58 in a Class 6A-Region 3 semifinal, it was hard not to appreciate what Smith had just done.
Scoreless for the first half, Smith took the game over in the second, scoring Palmetto’s last 13 points and sending the Tigers (16-12) into Saturday’s region championship, which they will host against Winter Haven at 7 p.m.
“I knew I was going to score somehow,” said Smith, who finished with 23 points. “I don’t really give up on myself, and I just kept shooting.”
During the game’s tense final quarter, Smith kept making everything, too. A baby jumper gave Palmetto a 52-48 lead with 3:24 remaining. Then came a 3-pointer, a runner in the lane and another long 3-pointer to give the Tigers a 60-55 lead with just less than a minute to go.
Then he canned a pair of free throws with 31.6 seconds remaining, giving Palmetto a 62-57 lead and putting an end to the Gryphons’ season.
“I challenged him at halftime because somebody said that he was scoreless,” Palmetto coach Reggie Bellamy said. “I told him, ‘You ain’t going to go through the whole game being scoreless.’ I told him to give me something, and he gave it to me.”
Was Bellamy expecting that?
“With him,” Bellamy said, “you’ve got to expect the unexpected.”
Despite the shooting woes of their most potent weapon, the Tigers shook off a disastrous first quarter, during which they shot 1-of-14 from the field and trailed 16-5, to take a 28-27 lead into the half.
The big boost came from sophomore Jarrid Rhodes, who came off the bench and, despite a broken finger, scored 11 second-quarter points and buried three 3-pointers.
“My big thing to them was, ‘What about our passion? About being relentless? Having a high level of intensity?’” Bellamy said. “Then we turned it up a notch after halftime, and our defense was better for us. Seniors, seniors, seniors.”
Senior point guard T.J. Mann had 14 points and went 4-for-4 from the free-throw line, and the Tigers forced 15 turnovers.
Smith took care of the rest.
“I told myself, ‘The only way we were going to win this game is for me to step up like that,’” Smith said. “I just knew I had to finish.”
Next up is Winter Haven (20-7), a 60-42 winner Tuesday over Land O’Lakes.
“We’ve just got to practice hard. We’re feeling pretty good,” Smith said. “We just don’t want to get complacent. We just have to keep working.”
